Chapter 47
When Greene enters, she sees me and says, “Of course you’re here. Why am I not surprised.”
“When you go back in, tell him you know it’s Clarissa’s.
That her prints are all over it. I know this is just a start, a foothold, and maybe only solves Clarissa’s murder, but if we can gain some traction with the murder and take down Ridgeway, maybe we can figure out if this has all been set in motion to simply copy the CA.
” I realize I’m speaking too fast, the tension curled inside me unspooling in any way it can.
“Whoa,” Greene says. “You broke into Ridgeway’s shed, and now you want us to stick our necks on the line while interrogating him, making illegally obtained evidence part of the record?”
“Yes,” I say, relieved that Greene is finally stating it out loud instead of giving me the eye.
“You can blame it on me, say I dropped the pack on your doorstep, but we need to find out why they had it in the first place, and we need to find out why there was a damn sketchbook with the ranch logo on it and sketching pencils in the pack.”
Greene looks to Alderson. He gives her a curt nod. “We do need to understand their role in all this. If these guys put out the sketch of Crosbie, we are wasting our time in trying to find the real CA.”
“Okay, but.” Greene turns to me before storming out. “For the record, I’m not worried about getting in trouble. I’m worried about not being able to get a DA interested in looking into these possible murderers, because the evidence was obtained illegally.”
It should sting, but I’m too numb to even feel it.
“Let’s cut the crap,” Greene tells Lasserio. Round two. “We’ve verified that the backpack is Clarissa Haynes’s.”
He stares wide-eyed, so I can tell he’s a little taken off guard.
“You need to tell us how is it that you have her backpack, and you need to tell us now.” Her voice is stern and means business—probably fueled by her anger at me—but Lasserio doesn’t know that. He sits up taller like a schoolboy being reprimanded. He squirms in his seat and looks to the wall.
“Found it,” he says.
Change of story . . .
“Where?”
He pauses before he speaks. Formulating the next fib. “Some bar.”
“Some bar?”
“Yeah, in Choteau. She must have left it behind.”
“Before you keep lying to us,” Greene says. “You need to know that we will check out every word you say, and all of these lies will be used against you.”
He stews, fidgets in his seat. Says, “Okay. On Ridgeway’s property. I found it on the ranch. Not far from the area she was interested in, by that swampy part. She must have left it there when she was snooping around. It’s not our fault she left her pack on property she was trespassing on.”
“When? When did you find it?”
“I don’t remember the date. Earlier this summer.”
“What about the sketchbook inside the pack?” Greene asks.
“No idea.”
“Why does it have the ranch watermark on it?”
He smiles. “She probably swiped it from Ridgeway. Little thief.”
“Bullshit.” My anger launches me to my feet.
“After he killed her at the river,” I say, wishing my voice were loud enough to pierce the soundproof room, “he took it. Then, like a dumbass, he put it in his shed. But when I came snooping around and asking questions, Ridgeway told him to get rid of it, so he went to pick it up but got nervous to be spotted with it when the other car pulled in.”
“Probably, but we can’t prove that. It’s all speculation on your part,” says Alderson.
I stop pacing and refocus on Greene. She says, “What was the sketchbook being used for? Did you or Ridgeway use it to draw Crosbie Mitchell’s face?”
Lasserio thinks before flashing a wicked grin. “What makes the stupid bitch think she’d get on some national killer’s hit list anyway? She think she’s that important?”
They hate me enough to do it, but did they? Did they draw me and have the smarts to put it on the web without the FBI being able to trace them? I have a sinking feeling that they didn’t, that the real CA is out there. The one who drew my face, my earrings.
“Does that mean you’re admitting that you guys copied the killer—that you and Ridgeway put out the sketch yourselves?”
He continues to smile slyly. “I think I’m done talking now. Don’t I get a phone call?”